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ZL3AI > JOTA 21.10.01 13:51l 59 Lines 2949 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : ZL3AI149116
Read: GUEST
Subj: Computer perspective
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From: ZL3AI@ZL3VML.#80.NZL.OC
To : JOTA@WW
Hi all,
JOTA AND COMPUTERS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our club had arranged for some groups of Guides to come to our clubrooms on
the Saturday evening between 7pm and 9pm, and a total of around 20 or 30
girls attended (hard to keep track!) from three different groups in the region.
We had HF, VHF and UHF running, as well as one computer running morse software
and another running a ham exam study aid. My own responsibility was to keep
an eye on both computers to give guidance/encouragement, etc, so I thought
that you might like to know how this aspect worked in a JOTA context where
the main focus is on radio operation.
I observed that the ham exam study aid got a limited amount of interest,
mainly by a small dedicated group of girls and some of the adult leaders.
The morse computer got more interest - it had two morse programs:
- One was primarily designed for public displays to attract passers-by and had
a large font. It also had a morse output on a serial port and this ran a
5mm yellow LED mounted in a picture of a battleship so that it looked like
the ship was sending morse with a signalling lamp. Quite eye-catching.
- The other had a morse key connected via a serial port and drew dots and
dashes on the screen as the key was 'tapped' as well as making beeps.
Currently I have a programme under development that decodes an external key
input and displays it as text, but it has the odd bug. I really wished it
was operational for JOTA, as using the key and to send morse seemed to be
the most popular computer activity for all the age groups.
One thing I noticed was that sometimes (often?) there would be no radio
contacts on one or more of the three radio systems we had running, so the
computers were handy as they were always usable.
At times in the evening with Guides coming and going from the venue there would
be a large number present - too large to cluster around each radio, so the
computers could absorb the 'overload' without the girls drifting away or
getting bored.
The computers also gave us the opportunity to present other aspects of ham
radio, and once introduced to the computer the girls could be left unattended
(handy if you don't have enough hams for every single activity).
Morse, often thought not relevant in general, is actually quite fascinating to
young people and especially Guides and Scouts who get involved in learning it
as part of their activities.
The computers we used were my own laptop (286) and a club Desktop (XT/286?),
both normally regarded as landfill candidates, but both put to excellent use in
promoting our hobby to these wonderful young people.
The software was HAMDISK, CW-DEMO and CWIT, all written by myself. The
unfinished morse key decoder is currently called CW-KEY but that might change
as development proceeds.
73, David.
T4 1.5à24
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